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WIYW-Alicia

I am so excited to introduce you to another guest for What Inspires You Wednesday tonight! Meet Alicia...

I’m sitting at gate 21 at the Minneapolis airport waiting
for people to deplane so I can get to my next destination. It’s mid-morning on
a Thursday in February and the airport is bustling with spring breakers.
There’s only standing room left and I was lucky to find a seat. The man to the
left of me has a suit on and ear buds in, the other man to the left of me is
traveling with his wife. He asks me about Hoover’s Hatchery. I’m wearing a branded
pullover because 1. I only purchase simultaneously the most comfortable and
business casual apparel and 2. I hate packing more clothes than I will ever
wear causing me to drag and extra heavy bag across all the gates and terminals,
and 3. My Hoover’s apparel currently outnumbers my “street” apparel. I work in
marketing, whatever.

I give him my typical elevator speech, “We’re a small
hatchery in northern Iowa that supplies and ships baby chicks to farm stores
and customers nationwide.”

I get the typical response, “Really!? You ship chicks
nationwide? Wow! How does that work? I mean, they make it??” I look at him and
know that he’s seeing the familiar small grin that forms on my face each time
people ask me this very question.

The joy and amazement that people get when they learn about
baby chicks, the hatching and shipping process, and how we support farm stores
in their mission to supply customers with backyard poultry keeps me going every
day. My job isn’t a job, it’s an opportunity to support and educate others that
they too can raise their own animals that give them breakfast. They too can
learn the ups and downs about animal agriculture, and hopefully someday have a
greater appreciation for those that raise animals on a larger scale.

The hardest question for me to answer by far is, “So what do
you do at Hoover’s?” A job title to me is just a title. I don’t like job
titles, it seems like no matter what position you’re in, you always feel like your
title never justifies all the other work you’re helping with. That expectation
should just come with working at a growing company.

So, what do I do? I’m the marketing manager, and here at
Hoover’s part of that means managing our fantastic customer service team and
arming them with tools and the ability to serve our customers in the best way
possible. We have tough days, and difficult customers, but I couldn’t ask for a
better team to help solve their problems. We’re in the business of putting
smiles on people’s faces when they get a happy peeping box of baby chicks, and
its our job to turn their day around on the rare occasion that things go wrong.

I work day-in-and and day out promoting our brand and
defending it. Every day I wake up at 6 and check my email on my phone sitting
on my nightstand. I glance at my calendar and start mentally making lists. Sometimes,
if I see I have a flurry of notifications I’ll check social to make sure
everything is right in that world. I get ready, get my two girls out the door/dropped
off, and head to work. I get to work and
dump my mental list into my planner. I live by lists. It’s the only way I can
prioritize and make sure I haven’t missed anything. I open my email and take
care of the “quick kills” to make me feel like I’m accomplishing things.
Usually by 8:30 other items have come up that our team is looking for help with,
and my day has officially started. This is why I write things down, usually by
8:30 my day is completely full of distraction, and that’s just life, its ok,
we’re keeping customers happy, remember? It is our number one priority.

The other things I do that aren’t so day-to-day include
creating email campaigns every other week. I’m the editor of our blog and I
communicate regularly with our team of writers. They truly are chicken
crusaders that give our customers information about troubleshooting and raising
chickens. I check and schedule social posts out, and make sure that we are
following our content calendar. I come
up with new and different ways to interact and reach our customers and many,
many more things wherever our brand is represented. When you look at my job under
a microscope, each task seems so trivial, but when its all put together into a
big puzzle throughout the year the real magic happens, all those little
projects and day-to-day tasks come
together into one big canvas that becomes our brand voice and story.

Our spirit of ingenuity here at Hoover’s drives my hunger for more each day. No two days are alike for me, and the promise of each of those days being different keeps me going. What inspires me is my love for the Hoover’s brand, the promise of a better tomorrow through our ingenuity, and the hustle it takes to meet our customers needs.

Thank you, Alicia, for sharing what inspires you!

Be sure to follow Hoover's Hatchery on Facebook and check out their website! It's where we get our chicks and they never disappoint!